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Spirit magic spell balance


styopa

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Just querying the crowd for general questions on spirit magic (and other magic) spell balance.  I know what I think, but I'm curious what the general consensus is here as well.

For example, Protection: 1 mp = 1 AP (durable) every location for 5 min.

Using this as the baseline, then, if you were inventing a spirit magic spell that perhaps only protects the FRONT of a character, would 1mp = 2ap per location?  What if the spell only protected 3 locations (front and back), or even just a single location; would it be worth more, maybe 3 or even 4ap per mp?

 

What about ablative protection - ie AP that go away when hit...so if a loc has 5 ablative AP, and you take 3, the next hit there are only 2ap left?  Would 1mp = 5ap or more?

I like some of these ideas, but I can see them quickly leveraging - if the relationship is linear - into pretty big numbers.  For example, if you had a spell that ONLY protected one location, only the front, and the AP were ablative, how much would 1mp be worth?  6ap?  8?  More?

 

The other one would be about healing...right now 1mp = 1 hp instantly.  What if you were crafting a heal-over-time spell, that gave the target a smaller amount of healing spread out over time, ie 1mp might be 2hp but they are only granted to the target 1hp at the end of the next 2 rounds?

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I think a linear relationship would be dangerous and vulnerable to mini-maxing or other forms of exploration. SO this would be a "proceed with caution" path of thinking. I could see some clever player coming up with some sort of specific application of a spell that minimized the penalties while maximizing the protection. 

For example, just off the top of my head, if protection could be cast on only part of the body, then a character could forgo the heaviest pieces of armor, such as chest protection, and rely on of magic. Especially in RQG where the chest has high ENC but gets hit the least often of any location.

 

As for something like delayed healing, I'd consider using the old RQ3 sorcery duration table as a guide. Something along the lines of subtracting the MP cost from the spell, but with a minimum cost of 1 MP., and that the spell would be very vulnerable to countermagic and such since it would be both low power and long duration

 

For example, a Heal 5, that takes 2 hours to work for 1 MP might be okay. But, I'd suggest playtesting it a lot

 

 

 

 

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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The proposal sounds a bit like a workaround for the "wear no armor in <location>" geas.

I don't think that magic scales that way - your 10 inch weasel familiar takes the same amount of Protection MP as does your war bison.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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9 hours ago, Anunnaki said:

Hiya,

Is this RQ3 duration (5 min/25 rounds) baseline for spirit spells that you are thinking about?

Temporal spirit magic only has a duration of 2 minutes (10 rounds) in RQ2/RQG, hence the question.

Kind regards, James

Yes, exactly.  Ours is a RQ3 campaign, generally.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

The proposal sounds a bit like a workaround for the "wear no armor in <location>" geas.

I don't think that magic scales that way - your 10 inch weasel familiar takes the same amount of Protection MP as does your war bison.

I think that's a fair point - 1mp=1pt protection not only for your Siz 0 weasel, but also that Siz 60 dinosaur.  Should it?  I know magic is magical and doesn't necessarily have to obey logic of conservation of energy, etc (and really shouldn't except perhaps sorcery which I've always seen as more formulaic).  Seems like there would be SOME sort of limit particularly to spirit magic? 

I'd toyed IMG with the idea of capping the strength of spirit magic spell to caster's POW/3 FRU meaning only someone POW 16+ could even cast heal 6....Without it, we quickly discovered the moment someone in the party managed to lay a hand on heal6, the loss/reattachment of a limb became trivial... and I'm not sure it should be, ever?

14 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I think a linear relationship would be dangerous and vulnerable to mini-maxing or other forms of exploration

Absolutely, that's why I'd guess that I'd start with the premise that the default spell (let's use protection as the example) is the default because it is the most efficient or is the most scalable, or both.   So maybe there's a special spirit spell that also for 1mp gives you 2ap in a SINGLE location, but it's scaling isn't 1:2, it's 1:1.5, so 4mp version would give you 6ap in a single location.   It's certainly far, far more efficient to spend 2mp and get 2ap everywhere, but I could certainly see certain circumstances where an extra couple AP in a single location might have some utility?

47 minutes ago, Mugen said:

I would not give too many of your "ablative armor" per MP spent, because they're basically a way to apply "preventive healing" on a character, and extend a character's hit points. 2 per MP sounds right to me.

That's a very good point, actually...it's more like pre-healing than armor.

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1 hour ago, styopa said:

Yes, exactly.  Ours is a RQ3 campaign, generally.

I think that's a fair point - 1mp=1pt protection not only for your Siz 0 weasel, but also that Siz 60 dinosaur.  Should it? 

Yes it probably should, because the effects of being hit are the same regardless of SIZ. Also, the SIZ 60 dinosaur is going to get slightly reduced protection because it's high SIZ will give opponents and increased chance to hit, and also an increased chance to impale and get through th e spell.

Quote

I know magic is magical and doesn't necessarily have to obey logic of conservation of energy, etc (and really shouldn't except perhaps sorcery which I've always seen as more formulaic).  Seems like there would be SOME sort of limit particularly to spirit magic? 

I think for a living creature the SIZ isn't a problem, as the effect is the same. Especially when you consider that the spell has no limit to how many times it can stop damage while active. For example, someone with Protection 10 could pretty much shrug off burst after burst of arrows/mutilmissles even submachinegun fire, barring impales, all hitting on the same SR, and over multiple rounds. So SIZ protected really insn'ta factor, nor how much total energy a spell should stop. Just how much it can stop from one attack. 

 

2 hours ago, Mugen said:

I would not give too many of your "ablative armor" per MP spent, because they're basically a way to apply "preventive healing" on a character, and extend a character's hit points. 2 per MP sounds right to me.

Sounds about right to me too. The Spirit Magic spell Vigor gives 2 CON per point, which would functionally give a character +1 hit point per MP, and the other benefits of a higher CON, such as resistance to poison, and fatigue. But Vigor limits the amount you can raise your CON to a maximum of twice their current, unadjusted CON. I suggest something similar with Hit Points. 

 

 

Edited by Atgxtg

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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2 hours ago, styopa said:

That's a very good point, actually...it's more like pre-healing than armor.

D&D 4th edition called this "Temporary Hit Points", and put a limit on it that you should use : if a character should benefit from 2 or more sources of THP, only apply the greatest one, to avoid too much stacking.

EDIT: I realize RQ already has a solution to that problem, as spirit magic spells don't stack... Funny how D&D 3+ had a problem RQ2 addressed years before.

Edited by Mugen
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2 hours ago, styopa said:

I'd toyed IMG with the idea of capping the strength of spirit magic spell to caster's POW/3 FRU meaning only someone POW 16+ could even cast heal 6....Without it, we quickly discovered the moment someone in the party managed to lay a hand on heal6, the loss/reattachment of a limb became trivial... and I'm not sure it should be, ever?

 

I guess it depends on your setting. Certainly Glorantha this is the case...in fact the new edition talks about how the prevalence of magical healing changes the dynamics and culture of violence.

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21 hours ago, styopa said:

I'd toyed IMG with the idea of capping the strength of spirit magic spell to caster's POW/3 FRU meaning only someone POW 16+ could even cast heal 6....Without it, we quickly discovered the moment someone in the party managed to lay a hand on heal6, the loss/reattachment of a limb became trivial... and I'm not sure it should be, ever?

If reattachment of severed limbs is not to be trivial, Heal Wound needs to not be a Common Rune Spell. Theistic folk really don't have need of large Heal Spirit Magics, with Heal Wound in their back pocket all the time.

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21 hours ago, Mugen said:

 Funny how D&D 3+ had a problem RQ2 addressed years before.

 When a game is mostly about chasing bonuses stacking and and limits become an issue. 

4 hours ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

What's the largest Variable Spell you have in your Glorantha's?

Depends. In RQ2 it was set by the spell, but in RQ3 it became whatever the characters could manage to find, which turned out to not be much higher than in RQ2. After a point, the situational and magic point costs usually outweigh the benefits, or to put it another way,if a PC actually needs Bladesharp 12 or Heal 10 then things are going horribly wrong, and if they don't need Bladesharp 12 or Heal 10 then learning (or casting) them is a waste of storage and magic points.

The most powerful spirit magic spell I saw "regularly" carried in a campaign was a Bladesharp 10 spell, but that was in a matrix built into a sword.Nobody had to learn that, though, and the sword was something the player quested for before fighting a dragon. The player wasn't exactly happy when the sword still bounced off the dragon's armor.

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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5 hours ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

What's the largest Variable Spell you have in your Glorantha's?

Spells over 6 points are unusual, but not unheard-of. I once had a character with Bladesharp 10, but that was a created-as-rune-level game set in Dorastor. I'd make it a little challenging to get spells over 6, but not onerous.

The largest stackable spell I ever cast was Swallow 10 (damn trollkin parried me, so I only ate his maul), and the biggest extension was Flight 3 with Extension 10. The latter was the same Dorastor game, different character.

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On 1/22/2019 at 8:58 AM, HreshtIronBorne said:

What's the largest Variable Spell you have in your Glorantha's?

Soltak Stormspear had Dispel Magic 9 and a 9 Point Enhancer, so he could mount Dispel Magic 18, in RQ2.

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

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On 1/20/2019 at 10:35 PM, styopa said:

Just querying the crowd for general questions on spirit magic (and other magic) spell balance.  I know what I think, but I'm curious what the general consensus is here as well.

You could use the examples you gave and they would work. However, why bother? Who would use Protection that only worked on the front, for example? 

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

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49 minutes ago, soltakss said:

You could use the examples you gave and they would work. However, why bother? Who would use Protection that only worked on the front, for example? 

If it used less MP (and or took less mental storage space), I can certainly see times when it would be valuable.

For example if it was half the mp of full protection, I can see A LOT of adventurers deciding they'd rather have 2AP in front than 1 all over.

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On 1/22/2019 at 2:58 AM, HreshtIronBorne said:

What's the largest Variable Spell you have in your Glorantha's?

In mine?  6 I think.  I can't recall anyone casting anything higher in 15 some years.  I don't think there's any real cap in the rules, but RQ2's "you have to learn it by beating a spirit" was sort of a nice organic way to keep that in check...even if AFAIK few campaigns actually played that out more than a couple of times, instead just rationalizing it into higher prices.  

I think our current rule is (mp*10p) for same-cult.  Associated cults are slightly higher, and 'free market' spell purchases are quite expensive, 3x-5x that, with spells 4pt and above generally not available to outsiders in any case.

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